Borderland negotiations of identity in language education: Introducing the special issue

Abstract

Anzaldúa’s (1987, 2002) conceptual lens of “borderland spaces” can contribute greatly to understanding the complexity of language teaching and learning, in which individuals continually encounter, wrestle with and cross borders of “language,” “culture,” “place,” and “identity” (Rutherford, 1990), as well as affirm and reify them in complex and, in many cases, seemingly conflicting ways. Building on and extending the growing body of research on identity, the current special issue adds to the scholarly conversation on identity in language education, with a focus on the multifaceted, fluid, and performative nature of the negotiation of being and becoming in borderland spaces characterized by movement, change, diversity, hybridity, and tension, and intersectionality. The studies in this issue illustrate how multilingual individuals perform their identities as they perpetuate, resist, patrol, question, and/or challenge the ideologies that both give shape to and reflect discursive and material spaces.